Your soundbar's Dolby Atmos is probably fake, and your room is to blame

Dolby Atmos on soundbars is largely a marketing claim rather than a true immersive audio experience. The physics required for up-firing drivers to work correctly demand a flat, hard ceiling at 8-12 feet — conditions most living rooms don't meet. Additional limitations include small 2-3 inch drivers that can't move enough air for convincing object-based audio, physical speaker separation constraints within a 4-foot bar, and bandwidth limitations of standard HDMI ARC that prevent passing uncompressed TrueHD Atmos. Even with eARC and proper source equipment, the hardware itself becomes the bottleneck.